Chess 4
When you are floating midst an endless sea of blinding white light, with no form of anything anywhere near you within any conceivable distance, you have a lot of time with which to think.
With which to plot.
With which to regret.
I said I hated him, that last time. Damn kid. I honestly thought I hated him. That it was all his fault. All his fault that I got suckered into this blasted mess. But he had even less of a choice than I did. He was born into his destiny, right from the very beginning. The goddesses were after him from his very conception. I had thirty years without their demon taint.
But then, you don't know the story, do you?
Ok then. I have nothing but time.
I was the King of the Gerudo. The only male in an entire city of females. Needless to say, I was well loved. It came as no real surprise to me that a Goddess would want a piece for herself. Damn my ego.
She came down in a bright, fiery ball of light, scorching away what little water we had managed to squeeze from the desert's grip. Anything wood caught instantly. Fabric tumbled off of flesh in flaming tatters. And yet, our flesh wasn't touched at all.
She reached out to me with flaming arms. And she made a promise. A promise I could never forget.
Far to the east lies a prosperous land, a land where water runs clean through great channels in the earth, where it falls from the very sky, where it oozes from the very pores of the earth. Far to the east, there lies a land where food is as easy to find as sand, where a meal can be pulled from fresh earth in just a single year. It is a land of ease and prosperity.
And it can be yours.
If you yield to my will, it will all be yours.
And I felt the thirst burning at the back of my throat, and felt the hunger gnawing at my stomach, and knew the others all felt the same. Likely they felt worse. I was King, and they were subjects.
And then Din showed me this land, and I saw that it was green, in all places, and I cried.
That was the day I began my quest for this Promised Land. That was the day I sold my soul to a Goddess and began to build a vast army of Her creatures. That was the day I became 'evil'.
And now, I float endlessly in a vast, empty void. I thirst like I have never thirst before, but there is no water, not even the sandy grit dug up from the desert wells. I hunger like I have never eaten at all, to the point that I would seriously consider eating my own flesh to sate it. But alas, I cannot move. But alas, I cannot sleep. But alas, I cannot die.
I don't hate him any longer, nor do I hate the princess, for all she has done to wrong me.
Now, I know where my hate is truly directed.
At the cruel, merciless, unforgiving Goddesses, who gave us a world filled with nothing but pain.
Damn you.
Damn you all.